Britt's Graduation

June 21, 2008
Broad Brook, CT

Most of this past week has been oriented to activities running up to Britt's High School Graduation, which was last night in the school's auditorium. In addition, there will be a party on Sunday, so a lot of preparation is going into that as well.

On Wednesday, Geri went to get her hair done and stumbled upon a new Whole Foods in Glastonbury (the last town we lived in before we moved to NYC in 1994). This is a welcome addition to the range of shopping options as it may be a little easier to get there than some of the alternatives.

Since the weather has been variable over the last few days, I've been able to take advantage of the dry times to get some work done on the coach. I treated some rust spots on the frame holding the radiator grill, and replaced a rubber strip that keeps road debris from flying up into the radiator. This way, I was able to put the grills back on before Sunday's guests are here.

Yesterday (Friday) was devoted to shopping as Geri and Pat got most of the stuff needed for Sunday's get-together, which will involve about 30 people. Britt was looking for a simple "hot dogs and hamburgers" type of thing, but that's not the way it's done. Potato salad, macaroni salad, sausage and peppers, kielbasa, cold cuts, desserts - you get the idea. I'm pretty sure I know what we'll be eating next week, and it'll all be great. Geri made up a big batch of her special sauerkraut recipe for the occasion - yum!

The graduation itself was in the evening, and it was very crowded. Like many other locales, they try to have the graduation outside unless the weather doesn't cooperate. They made the right call yesterday by bringing it inside. Even though most of the day was nice with periods of clouds and sun (hmmm, maybe I should work for AccuWeather?), the clouds formed about an hour before the kick-off and just as we arrived at the school it started to pour. Of course, by the time we were going home, the sun was coming back out. It was pretty much the same last year when Alicia graduated.

For some reason, Britt's graduating class was almost twice the size of Alicia's (and girls outnumber boys about 2:1). There was barely enough room on the stage for all the graduates, and nowhere near enough room in the audience for everyone who wanted to attend. Tickets were allocated per graduate, and we were lucky to get seats together. We had a good view from where we were, but I wasn't able to get many photos because we were buried deep in our row and I couldn't get out. I did get a few, though. The overflow crowd was shuffled into two adjoining rooms where they were able to watch the festivities via a TV feed.

After the ceremony, we retired to the house. I got a few more pictures of Britt and her boyfriend, Keith before they headed out to his house and then the "all-nighter". Like a lot of towns, East Windsor sponsors a post-graduation shin-dig at the school from 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM. It's aimed at keeping the kids out of trouble and seems to work, at least for that one night. Here is a link to a few pictures I posted:

http://picasaweb.google.com/GeorgeandGeri/BrittSGraduation

Al ordered pizza and we opened some wine to celebrate (graduation is an accomplishment for the parents as the kids). The Bowers stopped by for a while (no graduation for them this year; they have a couple of more years to go). After they left and the wives called it a night, Al and I finished with a nightcap (Booker's bourbon for him and Grappa for me) on the deck, where it was nice and cool.

All in all, everything has worked out according to plan so far. Excellent!